Could Have Been
by hophophop
Summary: Part 8 of Dark and Deep, a series of related stand-alone stories. "If anything ever happened to you, I'm not sure I could forgive myself." Contains some non-graphic depictions of violence.


**Note: Thanks to "Dead Man's Switch," I finally figured out the title of this series. The stories are related but intended to be essentially stand-alone pieces. I also included some earlier works that I think fit with the characterization but I'm happy to get feedback on their appropriateness to this set. Thanks also to everyone who has favorited or reviewed and encouraged me to take the serial step. Your feedback means the world to me.**

_"If anything ever happened to you, I'm not sure I could forgive myself."_

* * *

Watson lay bleeding on the kitchen floor, unconscious and out of reach. Gunshot wound at relatively close range, no more than three metres, he calculated automatically, noting the hole and blood splatter on the wall, an exit wound mid-back and not a sliced jugular or evidence of any kind of tripod device for which he could only be grateful even as the pool of blood next to her, less than one litre, no more, survivable, slowly expanded in an unsustainable fashion, thirteen minutes before it would be too late, unless there was significant internal trauma in which case—

In the part of his brain not shattered by the horror of what had happened, he condemned the technique. He would not have had to resort to such lengths; he could have gotten her cooperation without such crudeness oh god Watson.

Never, he would never do such things, but no, he could have, did, anyone could under the right circumstances, no point in lying to himself now, that was how they got into this predicament in the first place, and now, if it would save her life, again, anyone might cross any number of lines governing decent behavior if the motivation were great.

The difference here was what he knew. He knew what she could handle without irreparable damage. He knew her, his— He would not have had to blast a hole in her side or her psyche. He didn't know which wound was more severe.

_Live, Watson._

Twisting his arms against the ropes that restrained him, he could hear their attackers returning down the hallway. He swallowed, willing his body and face to remain still, to reveal nothing.

_Live—_

* * *

A screeching mechanical clatter jolted him to his feet before he was fully awake, and he staggered into the kitchen.

"Oh, sorry, it's new, obviously, and I had no idea it would be this loud." Watson was standing at the helm of a blender full of green and pink goop. It looked disgusting. "It's been a while, and I really wanted to get back to green smoothies, especially now that the farmers market has local kale again. I didn't think you'd mind if I bought another blender."

He was momentarily speechless with relief at the sight of her and then blurted out the first thing that came to mind that wasn't gasping her name. "That's horrible."

"No, if you put enough fruit in, that's all you taste—"

"Not your bizarre concoction; that noise. I thought the boiler had exploded. Or possibly a helicopter had crashed in the garden." Hyperbole seemed the best strategy to mask how shaken he was. He hadn't had a dream that vivid since before he got sober.

"It is pretty bad... I can take it back, look for a quieter one."

"That would be appreciated." He edged around her to the stove, not yet fully convinced this wasn't the dream. He lifted the kettle to gauge how much water was inside and turned on the burner before shuffling over to sit at the table.

"Are you feeling okay? You're not usually this groggy in the morning." She was stirring the contents of the blender with a wooden spoon, glancing over at him.

"You don't usually see me within seconds of being catapulted out of peaceful slumber by some infernal racket."

"Speaking of which, here it goes again."

As the blender roared, his heart rate picked up the pace and his mind conjured images from the dream. The frequency of that sound exactly matched his terror, its throbbing beat echoing and amplifying the panic he felt seeing her blood out of place, there on the floor where she was standing now. There was a reason he hated blenders. He pressed his hands over his ears.

* * *

They got the report that morning confirming that both the video and the fingerprint were planted artifacts, not any kind of proof that Irene was alive. They were well done, but whoever did it knew he would discover that the video was fake, the print had been tampered with, and the the bank account an empty shell. It was worth noting that the fingerprint was a superb forgery. Truly remarkable work that was meant to entice him as much as confuse and disturb him. A Fabergé egg of false identification; he had to admire it, and did.

The lack of a body continued to trouble, as the fabricated evidence didn't prove she was dead, either. Raising the possibility that he had been played, that she'd faked her death and now someone was toying with him, might then prompt disturbing thoughts reminiscent of Drummond and the way she had used him. In combination, it was impossible for him not to assume he would be manipulated to distrust Watson as well. This would be the plan, creating layers of doubt upon doubt upon doubt, building the need to second-guess, the compulsion to question and to lose faith. Ingenious, although it could be said that undermining his ability to trust was something of a redundant activity.

Of course this strategy demonstrated the extent to which they underestimated Watson, as he himself had done, once.

What he also acknowledged (and imagined was not intended by the perpetrators) was that the experience made him stronger. Without a body there was no certainty. Irene might be alive: Working with Moriarty, held by him, in hiding, incapacitated, transformed by amnesia and plastic surgery, planning to instigate a coup in Prague; really no outlandish James Bond plot was too outlandish to rule out. It wasn't far outside the realm of possibility to conclude that the cases he'd seen recently involving falsified blood and DNA evidence were brought to his attention on purpose, through the machinations of Moriarty's myriad agents, to stir such possibilities and doubts. Whether any if it was true or simply feasible didn't matter. It was a trap. The only way to move forward was not to pursue any of it.

If Irene were alive and free, well it had been more than two years, four times as long apart as they'd been together. He had lost a year to depression and self-medication and almost another to anger and revenge. The past few months had brought some acceptance, more or less. He thought he could move on now, let go as she presumably had (if there had ever been anything she had held on to, if it hadn't all been a sham), and prepare for the possibility that she would be a weapon if he ever did see her again. Obviously Moriarty considered her to be a weapon. This was something he could manage. He and Watson.

And there was the catch.

Watson would never accept being left behind for her own good or even for his own good, should he attempt to frame the argument that way. So this was something else he'd need to prepare for, steel himself against: The inevitability that she would be injured, and the possibility that she would be killed. His unconscious was clearly already working on that task.

He wasn't sure how firm these realities were in her mind. Hypothetically, yes, she believed the dangers were real. But practically, perceiving the tangible risk to her person? He couldn't get a read on that. Whatever terms she had come to regarding her own power over life and death as a surgeon had been destroyed by the end of her career. He still didn't know what had happened. He also concluded she was in denial regarding his own prior willingness to kill Moran, given her refusal to acknowledge any of it. In the dream he knew she had been harmed psychologically as well as physically, and it was logical to speculate that the vulnerability lay in this area, a trauma associated with the taking of another's life. The spectre of those two events had so far inhibited any conversation he might broach about life and death in the course of their work.

* * *

After dinner, waiting for the kettle and Watson gone upstairs, he considered and reconsidered and discarded multiple avenues to start a dialogue. When he came up from the kitchen with the tea tray he paused for a moment, watching her sitting at her desk in the study, bent over her notebook. She was inconsistent in her use of digital and analog methods of note-taking, and when he had commented on that once, she replied without looking up or missing a beat, "Takes one to know one," to which there really was nothing he could retort, so he hadn't.

They had established a pattern of study wherein they'd discuss some aspect of her recent reading in the evenings when they weren't working on a case. Today's assignment had included venomous snakes, the psychology of sensory deprivation, and ancient Persian padlocks. He might have been a little more scattered than usual in selecting materials.

"I can hear you standing there. You better not be planning to pelt me with a scone," she said, not turning around. "If it's the ones I bought today, it's a waste of good pastry, and if it's the ones you left on the counter since the weekend, it could kill me."

He couldn't ask for a better segue than that. "All right, Watson, what would you do if you were attacked, not by a stale scone but at gunpoint?"

She swiveled in her chair to look at him, and he came into the study and set the tray down on his desk. "Seriously? I'd prepared a great report on using snake venom to corrode a lock and escape from being trapped in the trunk of a car. Anyway, I took this test already, with the DEA agent. I passed."

"That application of venom is intriguing; we can set up an experiment to compare varieties and test quantities and duration. But tonight I want to return to defensive strategies. Not that kind of defensive," he said when she immediately crossed her arms in front of her chest and rolled her eyes. "You were not alone that time, and there was only one gunman. What if it were just you and multiple assailants with guns?"

She sighed and deliberately dropped her arms to rest on her thighs. "Okay. Where am I, in this scenario?"

"Doesn't matter. Let's say, at home. Specifically, in the kitchen." He gave his head a little shake to dislodge the image of a litre of blood pooling out from where she lay.

"How did these people get in?"

"Don't avoid the question." He gave her her mug and held out the plate for her to take a scone and went back to sit at his desk.

"No, I mean, did I have advance warning that someone was breaking into the house, or was I taken entirely by surprise?"

The word 'taken' shook him. Scared him, if he was going to be honest with himself. Kidnapping was yet another possibility to process. But not today. He was starting to regret this line of questioning, as nausea slithered into his gut.

"Either one, as you like." He picked at his scone, tearing off pieces and not eating them.

"Okay. Well, in the case of complete surprise, I guess—" He frowned, and she corrected herself. "If surprised, I would attempt to play along, acquiesce, buy time, assuming they had some ulterior motive or purpose in coming here, threatening me. If they just started shooting, I'm not sure there'd be anything to do except curl into a ball in a corner, pull open the cabinet doors — or the fridge, that would be better if I were near enough — for some sort of shield, and hope for the best."

"And if you had some warning?"

"I'd grab a knife, call you and 911 if I had my phone, and hide if there wasn't time to escape through the garden."

"Where?"

She thought for a moment. "I can't think of any place they wouldn't check. You have those niches and holes for your, ah, implements; are there any human-sized bolt-holes in the house?"

"Not a bad idea, but no, not at the moment."

"Okay, then I'd try to get to one of your rooms to have access to another door up the stairs, and hide under the bed or couch."

"All right. Not bad. Good thinking about access to the stairs."

"What would you do?"

"Exactly the same. Except I wouldn't fit under my couch."

"Really?"

"It's barely 8 inches off the floor. I'm not entirely certain you would fit. We should test that."

She gave him a well-worn exasperated look.

"There's no trick or expert solution to this problem, Watson. Too many unknowns. It's possible circumstances would allow an offensive move against an armed attacker, as you know from experience, but there's no guarantee of that. It's important to stay observant of all possibilities but best not to pin success on any one of them. Staying alive is the priority. There aren't any options without that point first."

"Agreed."

"Anything to stay alive."

She narrowed her eyes at the tone he used; it was perhaps a little too vehement. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. There's nothing," he insisted in response to her silent but all too eloquent expression of skepticism. "I was just thinking about what might happen. Such things could happen. There are terrible people doing terrible things in the world, and some of them don't like what we do. You know this. It's important to be prepared, to think such scenarios through. That's all." He scowled at the surface of the desk and chewed on his thumbnail as the scenario from his dream forced him to think it through again and again.

"All right," she said slowly, taking a sip from her mug. "But all this applies to you, too. Between the two of us, you have the established history of life-threatening behaviour. Are you willing to trade that in for 'anything to stay alive' as well?"

He didn't answer, and she let it slide, but they both knew she'd press him again eventually. And he would push back, making her face what he knew to be true: this was not some hypothetical exercise. It was not a textbook case but as real as her dead patient and his heroin addiction and the next call they'd get from Gregson about a murder. He did not look forward to the conversation.


End file.
